Shams Charania is beefing with his former mentor Adrian Wojnarowski over reporting surrounding Dan Hurley and the Lakers’ head coaching job.
Charania had previously reported that the Lakers were “zeroing in” on JJ Redick, when out of nowhere two days later, Wojnarowski claimed Dan Hurley was in fact the leading candidate. Hurley then turned the Lakers down to remain at UConn.
Charania has since given an interview to Pat McAfee, Wojnarowski’s ESPN colleague, and he took a dig at the whole situation.
“If the Lakers want to go hire James Borrego, they’ve had a month to hire James Borrego,” Charania said. “They’ve had this week, after losing out on Dan Hurley –– I guess –– they’ve had this time to go get James Borrego.”
“‘I guess’? What was that?” McAfee said, in reference to Charania’s thinly veiled jab at Wojnarowski.
Meanwhile, former ESPN personality Amin Elhassan has claimed that Wojnarowski reported the Hurley news because he was upset about Shams scooping him on the Redick story.
Bill Simmons, Ryen Russillo and Skip Bayless are among the other media personalities to claim something seemed a little fishy about the report from Wojnarowski, who is very close to the Hurley family.
Both Simmons and Bayless suspect Hurley must have approached the Lakers and used them as leverage to negotiate a bigger deal with UConn (which he is currently in the process of doing, according to Wojnarowski). Woj also stood something to gain, in terms of getting the upper hand over Shams.
“I believe that Dan Hurley approached the Lakers, not vice versa,” Bayless said on Undisputed. “Even though they tried to sell, from the start, that our focal point of the start of our search for a coach was Dan Hurley. Well then, why would you wait a whole month before you would even talk to… even meet him?
“But Shams reported just a week ago that the Lakers have zeroed in on JJ Reddick. The Athletic was strong on “he is the choice”… So help me out. Doesn’t it come clear that Dan Hurley introduced himself into this and said, “Hey, would you be interested in me?”